Wednesday, 18 January 2017

With the coppicing completed for the winter, there's time for other things, like enjoying a frosty sunrise at Rye Harbour while waiting for my car to get it's MOT done. Here's a few photos, all taken using my phone rather than a proper camera (with some post-processing of course).

Monday, 9 January 2017

Well, the winter's work in the woods is now done! Just for fun, I put my GoPro camera up one of the last few trees to be felled:

The final few days of coppicing in 2016 including some pretty chilly ones:

and on the day we actually finished it was too foggy to get a photo of the whole area:

Here's now it looked a couple of days into the work, earlier in the autumn:

Here's the same view now, followed by some views from other angles:

This one's looking back from the far end. You can see we left a few trees standing - these included Oak, Hornbeam, Alder Buckthorn and a wild Apple. The idea is to give them a bit of an advantage over the regrowing Sweet Chestnut and Birch to increase the diversity in the woods.

Meanwhile, over in Sweep Wood, the Sycamore buds are beginning to swell a little. I guess they noticed that the Winter solstice has passed....

The Honeysuckle is also growing leaves. Not Spring yet, but the plants are planning ahead...

Even though the work's done, when I've been to the woods since I've always taken a snack for the Robin which got used to my company:

The other birds are busily enjoying the bird feeder too:

I also got a puzzle solved thanks to friend who's a better bird-spotter than I am. These birds had been flying over the wood regularly, but I had no idea what they were:

Well - now I know they are Shelducks, mostly juvenile females apparently. There's a lake not far away, which is presumably where they are coming from.

We did have a brief break in the work for Christmas, and joined a couple of friends in a wood adjoining ours for lunch on Christmas Day (Red Thai Curry - we're not traditional...):

Finally, with the coppicing done, I also went to help my friend Rich with some saw milling over in Tunbridge Wells:

Looking forward to Spring in the woods now, though hoping for some snow first!